


Oceanographer's Choice

by goblindaughter



Category: Eclipse Phase
Genre: F/F, Gen, Lost - Freeform, Warnings in author's note, asyncs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 20:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11540076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goblindaughter/pseuds/goblindaughter
Summary: Nothing in this story is graphic, but there's mention of self-harm, a brief depiction of medical and psychiatric abuse, and a self-hatred spiral pursuant to mental health issues.Also, if you're wondering just who these people are, that's fine--the main point of posting this is my exploration of asyncs and Lost stuff.





	Oceanographer's Choice

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing in this story is graphic, but there's mention of self-harm, a brief depiction of medical and psychiatric abuse, and a self-hatred spiral pursuant to mental health issues. 
> 
> Also, if you're wondering just who these people are, that's fine--the main point of posting this is my exploration of asyncs and Lost stuff.

She sees her name in all the advertisements of Venus the day she discovers her lover is a spy.

Adoración stalks the streets of Octavia, an open wound on the move, trailed by hungry shadows that watch her eyelessly. The shadows aren’t real; the angels say so, and so does her muse. She sees them anyway. They make her spine prickle.

 _Everyone has lied to you,_ whispers the dark voice that lives in the back of her head, the one that never really goes silent, no matter how much medication she takes or how many reality checks the angels and her muse can give her. _Everyone, everyone. You’re a useful monster, and that is all you’ll ever be to anyone._

She doesn’t think she’s strong enough to tell it it’s wrong. She doesn’t think Israfel is loud enough to drown it out.

So she walks, and walks, and the billboard selling energy drinks slips the syllables of her name in between frames of sylphs downing green liquid, and the bright stream of mining propaganda writes her name in dead pixels, and the pop-up hawking bargain fashion designs works her name into the stitching on a stiff golden waterfall of a gown. _Adoración, Adoración,_ comes the neon whisper wherever she goes.

The angels unroll it for her. They would not lie, her angels, her infection-- _this_ is real. Everything the angels say is true.

She stops near the metro and watches her name repeat in the glittering starbursts surrounding some makeup artist’s new muse. The faint letters fall like rain to the bottom of the panel and appear again as the fireworks go off around the model’s head, surrounding floating tubes of mascara.

Why, then?

She decides she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care if there’s a nest that wants her to join; she doesn’t care if it’s a distress call or an all-points bulletin or a threat. It doesn’t matter. She just wants Anahita--to kiss her, to hold her, to put her hands around her throat and _squeeze_.

No. _No._ She would never hurt Anahita, never, even if Anahita has hurt her. She would go after CID, for making this Anahita and sending her here; oh yes, she would do that. But Anahita she will not touch. Perhaps she won’t touch her ever again. Never, never again.

Would that be good or bad?

 _You’re spiraling,_ Israfel says gently. _Take a deep breath and focus, please. On my count._ He counts for her, and she breathes slowly, centering herself--her feet on the ground, her hands in her pockets, pink plastic of her coat against her arms, faint steely tang of the aerostat’s atmo on her tongue, familiar mass of the barbell in her tragus.

The world goes quieter. Not _quiet_ \--nothing is ever that, not for her--but better. _Thank you._

_Think nothing of it. Now, what are we going to do about this?_

_This_ meaning the signal. She likes it when Israfel says “we”. Three is always better than two.

_I don’t want to do anything._

_You have to, eventually, and you need to take your mind off--_

_Don’t say it._

_You need something to do,_ Israfel corrects himself. _Adoración, look again._

So she looks again, and looks deeper--lets her eyes focus and her pattern-vision rise to the forefront. And there at last she sees the real message. A map. It indicates a place not far from here, right above a little-used metro stop.

It looks like a trap.

Well, if it _is,_ she could use the fight. That's not a nice thing to thing. She knows it isn't. But it's a true thing. If someone's trying to trap her, they deserve the fight she gives them. _Be cautious, now. Please._

 _Cautious is as cautious does._ Hands clenched in her pockets, Adoración goes.

 

The square is small, outside one of the colleges--stairs down to the metro station, cheap shops, mostly empty except for students hurrying to class and buzzing fist-size ad drones. A white obelisk, either a sculpture or some kind of viral marketing thing, pokes out of the ground near the stairs to the metro. A woman leans against it, shadowed, half-hidden.

Adoración feels her first--that hum, pitched just so, sliding back into perception as the woman drops her guard. Then she steps forwards and the the light hits her face, her dark drowning-deep eyes, her dark hair.

Octavia. Like the Roman lady. Like the aerostat.

Her Octavia.

Risen. _Here._

It hits her, all at once, a riptide fractal swirl of memories--

 

\--Octavia, six years old, convulsing on the bed next to hers, and she is not supposed to see this but she knows it anyway, she knows it in the fog of her sickness, something is here, something is _in_ them, and oh, it is radiant, and it opens its many eyes--

\--Octavia, seven years old, grabbing her wrist and pulling her off another of their sisters, _stop it you’ll get in trouble_ , and she protests _she was hurting it_ , meaning the rabbit in the farm sim, just a pile of blood and white fur now, and Octavia, rolling her eyes, tells her _it’s not real silly_ \--

\--ten years old and they play hide-and-seek in the halls of the Institute, giggling as they flick in and out of knowing, learning to be silent, pouncing on each other and crowing _I win I win!_ \--

\--twelve, and teachers have started to make them compete, in physical contests and mental ones, mazes and whirling calculus problems and fighting pits, punishing them with shocks and rewarding them with better food and showers of affection; her best, fiercest opponent is Octavia, obviously Octavia, could be no on else, and they go highest, always neck-and-neck at the top of the class, always at each other's’ throats, but when another student comes to her and they whisper of going against Octavia together she tells them to go shove it, and later Octavia whispers to her that they made _her_ the same offer and it’s time to have a little fun, and in the next competition she and Octavia shred them utterly, beat them bloody--

\--thirteen  and her psychologist, who knows everything about her, who pushes past even the angels, is saying _you two are close, aren’t you?_ and she looks into the woman’s cold pale eyes and thinks maybe it would be better if they didn’t have this conversation, maybe it would be better if her psychologist didn’t think about this at all, and the angels tell her she only has to _reach_ , yes, just like that--

\--fifteen and the two of them, alone in the dorms, are fighting, and she can’t remember why, and Octavia rushes her and they go down in a tangle, the pair of them locked together, bodies pressed up along each other, and Octavia is on top of her, face so close so close, and her eyes are huge and dark and lovely and her hands are around her throat, and she flips them over and feels a rush, a hot bright thrumming in her blood that she has no name for, half her and half Octavia, a lightning-charged thing between them that is _beautiful_ , and Octavia lets go her throat and cups her face, and her mouth is soft, and her hand between her legs gentle and insistent, and it hurts a little but all she wants is more--

\--eighteen, and she watches Octavia’s head snap back and something in her screams screams screams and the angels wail a war song, and the station, the station burned--

 

\--and here is Octavia now, in front of her, alive and whole, and smiling at her. The angels see her; the angels see her bright rider, UV light leaking through her smile. (That’s not real. That’s something she’s making herself see, because that way it’s easier to understand.)

 _Be here,_ Israfel tells her. _Be here._

“You died,” she says, unable to think of anything else to say, barely able to think. Her brain buzzes so hot she’s amazed she can talk.

Octavia laughs. “Death is just a point of view,” she says. “Besides, these things are sturdier than they look. You should know.” Both of them wear their original bodies. Futuras don’t break easy. They were too well-made, designed to hold up against everything an async child battering themselves against the world could do and more. She takes another step forward and reaches out. “I’m sorry it took so long to find you. I’ve missed you, Addie.”

Only Octavia has ever, ever been allowed to call her that. They chose their names in secret, when they were young, and Octavia is allowed to use the nickname because she’s _Octavia._

Adoración takes her hand. It’s almost exactly the same as she remembers, but for the line of short parallel scars on the brown skin of her forearm--it’s real, now, not something out of the simulation, and longer, marching from her wrist all the way up to her elbow and halfway down again. It’s how Octavia keeps herself level. Adoración never liked that she did that.

“Hush,” says Octavia, “I know.”

“I missed you too,” she says. Octavia raises their joined hands to her mouth, presses a kiss to Adoración’s knuckles. Bright little sparks dance across the back of her hand; involuntarily, she shivers. Oh, she forgot. She forgot how good this felt. Hard on the heels of the thought comes a sense-memory of Anahita in her arms, Anahita giggling as she kisses her neck, and the brightness sours.

Octavia looks past her, over her shoulder and frowns. “You brought a friend. Did you notice?”

Her spine goes tense. She’s been followed? And she had no idea? Stupid sloppy little girl--should have _seen_ , should have _known._ Just one more thing wrong with her, one more thing she can’t do right. _Adoración, stop it_ , says Israfel.

“No.”  
“Whatever happened must have been bad, then. Look.” It’s easy, even after all this time. So easy. Like finishing a puzzle. They slide together, edges wrapping around each other, and Adoración sees. Jenna. Following her. Relief and something bitter curdle in her stomach. “Your mother?” Octavia asks. “Lucky girl.”

“She must be worried,” Adoración says distantly. “But I don’t--I can’t--”

 _You should talk to her,_ Israfel says.

“I can’t.” Jenna won’t understand. Or worse, she won’t _care._ Who would, about a little monster girl and her little monster problems?

_That’s not true. Adoraciòn, please._

“Let’s go,” Octavia says. “Somewhere else. I want you to myself right now. We have so much to make up for, Addie.”

“Yes.” Only Octavia can understand, really--only Octavia knows. No one else. (Deep in the back of her mind, she knows that’s not true, and more not fair, that she can’t ask something so big of Octavia, and Israfel whispers _stop that_ , but the feeling is so, so strong.)

Together, hand in hand, they slip away through the neon-lit night. They find crowds--a twenty-four-hour rave; the nearest big metro station, packed with commuters; a surge of shoppers pouncing on a sale. It’s not hard. The aerostat never sleeps. Finally, they lose Jenna ( _call her,_ Israfel begs, and she ignores him), and they walk beneath a double line of artificial cherry trees, down a mosaic path. It’s some kind of art installation; the bright red patterns, stark on the gray, remind her vaguely of octopuses, or maybe penises.

They don’t have to talk. They never have. All they have to do is link, and conversation is easy, easy past words. They don’t even need to finish the thought properly. _How did you--_

_\--so many escape shuttles, not hard to hitch--_

_\--the ads, why’d--_

_\--they’re everywhere. Your mother--_

_\--busted open the station. Where have you--_

_\--here and there, little bit of merc--_

_\--bet they loved--_

_\--good at what I--_

She still hurts too much to laugh, but she finds herself smiling. _Missed you._

_Missed you. What’s--_

The smile drops. It takes a huge effort not to just dump her pain through the link, to scream down the connection so someone else feels it as much as she does. Instead she sends it piece by piece--Anahita’s face, Anahita’s mouth soft on hers and Anahita under her , the communiques and the horrible unraveling puzzle. The CID sleeper agent hidden in her lover’s head.

Octavia’s hand tightens in hers, and suddenly she turns and hugs her tight, face buried in her neck. The warm weight of her is a comfort, and the smell of some vaguely cinnamony soap and synth-coconut hair oil. Her presence pulls the world around her just the way it did when they were children; it’s familiar, _safe_. Combined with the chemicals flooding her system and the soothing white noise of Israfel in the back of her head, it quiets the world, and Adoraciòn finds she can breathe again.

It’s hard to tell who, exactly, thinks it first: _she should be punished._

Not Anahita. Well--not _her_ Anahita. One of the others, the heartless CID fucker who fashioned her Anahita into a honeypot. _Her_. She hurt Adoración. She could have hurt Adoración's family. She could have _compromised Firewall_.

She should be punished _now_.

 _No,_ says Israfel, _Think this through first._

 _I will. I will._ She already has.

“Yes,” Octavia says. She raises her head; her eyes glitter with her rider’s light, and her teeth gleam white as she grins.

Adoración grins back, a sharp unjoyful expression, she knows, and the angels, ever loyal, grin with her. “Let’s go.”

 


End file.
